Tag Archives: brooklyn

Predatory equity takes place when landlords buy buildings based on the “projected” rents of a building rather than the current ones, subsequently paying huge amounts of money for rent stabilized affordable housing. The only way the finances will work is by forcing out long term residents and bringing in higher paying ones. This process, also known as gentrification, is taking place in rent stabilized, affordable housing all over New York City.

Predatory landlords do everything in their power to get long terms residents to leave their apartments such as ignoring tenant rights, decreasing basic services, or offering buy-outs. While asking tenants to accept money to leave isn’t illegal, it almost always is against the tenants’ interests. (Check out our one-pager on how to decide whether or not to accept a buy-out) One super at 725 4th Ave in South Slope, Brooklyn spoke with the Gothamist about his experience asking tenants to accept buy-outs to move:

“He said he was hired with a mandate to clean up the building,” so he did. It was his job.

After the fourth of fifth [buy-out], Duarte said, “I felt like I was doing wrong,” but people kept coming, and if he wanted to keep his job and support his family, he had to continue paying out. Twenty families left in the first round…Some tell Duarte that taking a buyout was the biggest mistake of their lives. He is sympathetic, but said, “I never pushed anybody out. They asked me, and I made an offer. I hoped they didn’t take it.

Long term residents living in Crown Heights, Bushwick, and other quickly gentrifying neighborhoods have their own stories of being offered buy-outs. Most often than not, tenants who accept money to leave will have a hard time finding a new apartment in the neighborhood in a similar price range. Families and communities are uprooted. Furthermore, each time a family leaves, the price of an apartment unit increases, and the precious stock of affordable housing diminishes.

This crisis is not just a trendy Brooklyn one. At 836 Faile St. in Hunts Point, tenants have been offered $3,000 to move out of their rent stabilized homes! (Likely this is to produce a cluster-site homeless shelter and allow private developers to profit off of evicting long term residents and exploiting the homeless crisis).

The more tenants understand their rights and the pros and cons of accepting buy-outs, the more they are determined to fight for their homes. To learn about how to fight back against predatory landlords, come out to the Crown Heights Tenant Union meetings every 3rd Thursday of the month at 7:00 pm at the Center for Nursing the Rehabilitation.

Everybody’s talking about gentrification. The term has been on the receiving end of a lot of positive press from NY Mag and NPR. On the other side of the debate, some activists in Philadelphia are trying to get the United Nations to consider gentrification a human rights violation. And just this morning, the NY Times wrote about several cities that are using progressive tax abatement programs to fight gentrification.

On Friday, February 28th, over 75 tenants from across Crown Heights gathered outside 1059 Union Street, a building that is home to 34 families and owned by BCB Properties, to protest the cycle of displacement and rent-overcharges. The demonstration announced the creation of the Crown Heights Tenant Union (CHTU), a resident led effort to demand community control over housing in Crown Heights.

Crown Heights (along with nearby Bedford Stuyvesant and farther north Bushwick) is ground zero in the struggle over gentrification in Brooklyn. The neighborhood is rapidly changing. According to Spike Lee,

Then comes the motherfuckin’ Christopher Columbus Syndrome. You can’t discover this! We been here…I mean, they just move in the neighborhood. You just can’t come in the neighborhood. I’m for democracy and letting everybody live but you gotta have some respect. You can’t just come in when people have a culture that’s been laid down for generations and you come in and now shit gotta change because you’re here? Get the fuck outta here. Can’t do that!

Lee’s criticism is as valid as it is impassioned, and to us it demonstrates just how high emotions run when you speak about gentrification in Brooklyn. And the ensuing outrage reflects how difficult gentrification is to talk about. Obviously gentrification so painful because of it’s associations with displacement, fractured neighborhoods, and disintegration of an close knit cultural community. In lamenting the cultural disrespect that new neighbors can display, Lee neglects to make a structural criticism of the capital processes that drive gentrification, and he neglects to give listeners an idea about how neighborhoods can fight it.

That’s where the CHTU comes in. The CHTU is using an inclusive and resident driven model to identify the true drivers of gentrification (hint: brokers and real estate capitalists who use their power as landowners to re-brand neighborhoods to middle/upper class tastes), and then, to fight them.

CHTU uses the slogan “Unite and Fight” to signify the importance of long-term tenants and newer tenants coming together in solidarity against the cycle of displacement and rent-overcharges. A tenant-driven effort to get landlords across the neighborhood to agree to a list of demands, the CHTU believes that homes are for people, not for profit. Demands range from a five-year rent freeze to prioritizing repairs in old apartments over renovations in new apartments to limiting the ability of landlords to pressure tenants to leave via buyouts.

CHTU understands that the problem is systematic. As Michael Powell wrote in the NY Times a few weeks ago, “This is New York City in the age of real estate as oil wells. To speak of gentrification as a house by house renovation march is not to do this justice. This is turbo-charged, developed plotted, bank fueled, quite intentional and difficult to mediate.”

The story of gentrification in Brooklyn is far from complete, and the good news is that there are many tenants who are working hard to write themselves into the history books. Tom Angotti, the Director of Hunter College’s Center for Community Planning and Development, recently wrote up a list of “5 Things You Can Do About Gentrification in NYC.” It boils down to two things: talk to your neighbors, and organize — the more than 75 tenants who rallied outside 1059 Union Street on Friday in the freezing cold weather can attest that the CHTU is doing both.

Donna Mossman of 1159 President St. puts it best:

Our neighborhood and buildings are undergoing major construction but the work being done is not for the long standing tenants. Our message to our landlords is clear: this is our home, we still live here and we are not leaving.

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Join us at the next CHTU General Membership Meeting!March 13, 7pm
727 Classon Ave (the Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation).

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It is a strange suspense that tenant organizers feel once a year, as they scroll down the new list of buildings being added to HPD’s Alternative Enforcement Program (AEP). Inevitably, our eyes scan the list for buildings we work in. And when we do see addresses we recognize, we are torn between disappointment that the buildings are in such bad shape, and hope that this might give us some leverage to improve conditions.

The Bloomberg administration created the Alternative Enforcement Program as a way for the department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) to identify the most distressed buildings in the city and enforce the necessary corrections. As well as the total number of violations, HPD looks at the severity of the problems, which are categorized as A (non-hazardous) B (hazardous) C (immediately hazardous) and I (court ordered to correct, or order to vacate). Once a building enters the program, it is inspected for violations and the owner has four months to do sufficient repairs. If they do not satisfy the requirements by then, they are subject to fees and liens against the building. In some cases, HPD will do the repairs themselves and send the bill to the owner.

We found two buildings whose tenant associations we work with on the 2014 AEP list: 1253 Franklin Avenue in the West Bronx, and 1159 President Street in Crown Heights. We also work with tenants (alongside PACC) in 1059 Union Street, also in Crown Heights. 1059 Union Street and 1159 President Street are both owned by BCB Properties: a landlord the newly formed Crown Heights Assembly Tenant Union has opted to target.

Brooklyn took the lead with 103 new buildings added to the program, 27 of which are in Crown Heights. The list continues with 55 buildings in the Bronx, 19 in Manhattan, 10 in Queens, and none in Staten Island. Only 187 buildings fit the requirements to enter the program this year instead of the usual 200, but according to The Observer, HPD cautions against reading too much into this.

The Observer article begins with a contrast between these distressed buildings and the luxury NYC housing that seems to exist, unscathed, in a separate realm – recalling Mayor De Blasio’s “tale of two cities” theme. As we wait to hear the mayor’s appointments for several HPD positions, we hope this will be a new chapter in the enforcement of building maintenance and repairs, which is a crucial part of preserving affordable housing stock. We will be fighting on President Street and on Franklin Avenue for the owners to take responsibility for their buildings and provide decent, safe homes for tenants.

If you live in an AEP building or just want to learn more, check out these resources:

Over the past couple of months, UHAB organizers have been working with tenants in 10 Westminster Road, a building near Prospect Park South whose mortgage is owned by Seryl LLC, the same private equity company that owns the mortgages on 545, 553, and 557 46th Street. With an HPD violation count of 205 for only 21 units, 10 Westminster is in the Alternative Enforcement Program. The building is in foreclosure and under the control of a receiver named Harry Horowitz who, according to tenants, is doing nothing to improve conditions. On the contrary, there is evidence that he may be trying to illegally raise rents.

Living here has been a long, rough journey for many tenants. Orazio Petito, the building’s landlord landed the building on Bill de Blasio’s Worst Landlord Watch List. One tenant had a ceiling fall in on her, sending her to the hospital and making her unable to work. Some of the apartments once went without running water for five days straight, others have gone without power for hours at a time, and when trying to contact management about such problems, tenants are treated disrespectfully.

The good news is, the people of 10 Westminster have not given up hope. With the help of South Brooklyn Legal Services, several of them are now in the process of entering the foreclosure case so their voices can be heard in court. We support the families in this building as they fight to make their home liveable, and to have some control over their surroundings. Seryl cannot get away with its irresponsible action! Stay tuned as this campaign moves forward!

After months and months of campaigning, primary season is finally over. While the federal government shut down on Tuesday, NYC held the run off election for Public Advocate. Letita “Tish” James won, and with a lack of a Republican challenger, she became the first black woman to be elected to city-wide office. So, the dust has finally settled. Its time to take a quick peek into how the best tenant rights advocates did!

Our friends over at TenantsPAC endorsed candidates up and down the ticket with a great success. TenantsPAC endorsees receive three key things from TenantsPAC: a public endorsement, tenant-based fundraising, and plenty of on-the-ground Get Out The Vote effort. An overwhelming majority of TenantsPAC endorsees won their primary races.

Here is a list of endorsees that move ahead to the general election on November 5th, where the chances of victory are extremely high.

City-Wide Offices

Mayor: Bill De Blasio

Public Advocate: Tish James

Manhattan Offices

Manhattan Borough President: Gale Brewer

City Council: Mark Levine

City Council: Helen Rosenthal

City Council: Benjamin Kallos

City Council: Corey Johnson

Queens Offices

City Council: Daneek Williams

Brooklyn Offices

City Council: Antonio Reynoso

City Council: Carlos Menchaca

There is little doubt that all of these candidates will take office in January and be incredible advocates for tenants. This election has been a fruitful one for progressives hoping for an about-face from the past three terms of New Liberalism under Mayor Bloomberg. Some TenantsPAC candidates, like Letitia James, Gale Brewer, and Bill de Blasio, have been crucial allies in the fight to protect affordable housing for many years. More allies means more success, which for us means more affordable housing units in New York. We’re looking forward to working with them in the coming years.

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The Surreal Estate is made up of the Organizing and Policy Department of the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board. We are motivated by our belief that all building residents have a say in what happens in their homes, and that tenants have an inherent right to assert their collective vision about how their homes should look and feel. The views and opinions expressed in these posts are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board as an organization.

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